The best organizational culture is one that draws practices from more than one model to bolster strengths and compensate for flaws. | Image Attrib.: Flickr user Sebastiaan ter Burg

While every business is different, there are some basic business cultures that just about every company exhibits. Most companies will fit into at least one or two of the archetypes of business, whether those categories be control, collaborate, compete, or create. While some might think that one culture can be better than another, there’s actually a way to make any culture work. Just like personalities, company cultures are not static and there is a way to adjust any company culture to make it better.

Types of Organizational Culture in Modern Business

While there have been various studies done on specific types of organizational culture, the culture is always based on the values, vision, and behaviors that the company embraces to reach its goals.[1. “Four Organizational Culture Types,” http://www.canfieldco.com/uploads/Four_Organizational_Culture_Types.pdf] Broken down to its most basic form, most organizational cultures can be described by one or more of the four following categories.

• Control – A control-based organization is often also called a hierarchy organization. That is because everything depends on a strict management structure and processes. One of a control culture’s most positive aspects is its efficiency.  
• Collaborate – A collaborate organization is one that takes on a team mentality. Decisions are often emotionally-driven and flexible. The company acts more as a family, which results in higher employee morale.
• Compete – A compete organization is similar to that of a control organization, as there is a hierarchy in place. However, with a compete organization, the focus is on individual achievement and being more successful than your coworkers. Workers in a compete environment are high achievers.
• Create – A create organization is a bit more free flowing and chaotic. They might not have a rigid rule structure in place, as they focus on a fluid and dynamic exchange of ideas. Create environments are a great place to find new innovations and inventions.

While each of these corporate cultures have some strong positive aspects, they can also become crippled by their own fatal flaws.

When Cultures Clash

Every strength has a flip side that is a weakness. When company cultures are inflexible absolutes, these weaknesses can cause a lack of efficiency, innovation, morale, or direction. Each culture has a major shortcoming that leaders need to be aware of.

• Control – In a control environment, the heavy focus on rigid structure and maintaining a chain of command can result in innovation getting stifled. Front line employees can have great ideas, but getting those ideas to management can become a journey filled with red tape.
• Collaborate – While morale in a collaborate environment might be great, the achievements in such an environment can become limited. When management makes emotion-based decisions, they might overlook employees failing to produce and as a result, the company fails to meet its goals.
• Compete – While great achievers, employees in a compete environment might view their coworkers not as colleagues, but as barriers to their own individual success. With a lack of unified vision, employee morale can suffer and result in high turnover.
• Create – A create culture is an idealistic culture. The problem with that is often times these create companies will become so focused on getting the next big idea that they fail to implement processes to complete the one they’ve already started. Create environments create great new products, but they can also create a lot of wasted time and resources.  

While each of these organizations has a fatal flaw, implementing ideas from the opposite end of the spectrum can resolve any major issues.

Making Opposites Attract

While it might sound extreme, sometimes the best way to solve an issue that comes from a certain culture is to go to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. For example, the lack of innovation that comes from a control environment can often be solved by implementing certain key points from a create environment.

The company 3M is an excellent case study in this area.[2. “At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity,” June 10, 2007, http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-06-10/at-3m-a-struggle-between-efficiency-and-creativity] This multinational conglomerate went through some major changes in 2001, when Six Sigma follower and former GM executive Jack McNerney took over. Under his leadership, the company took on a strict control culture, with a fixed leadership, stringent performance reviews, and multiple process-driven techniques designed to increase efficiency. It worked and 3M’s stock price rebounded after McNerney brought the company in line.

Flash forward to four years into this new leadership, and 3M had to face a major problem. The innovative company that brought people items like Post-it notes, masking tape, and Thinsulate was no longer an innovative leader. While efficient, their strict processes were severely hampering the development of new products.

So when new CEO George Buckley came on board, he loosened the corporate structure on the research and development department, instead implementing ideas from a create environment, where risk taking and waste is expected. He allowed higher expenditures on acquisitions and more free time for coming up with ideas, taking the attitude that out of 5,000 ideas, often only one will prove fruitful in the marketplace. He understood that risk and waste are a necessary part of creation.

Slightly changing the structure of one sector of the company—their research and development—and pulling it away from a control environment to a create one, allowed 3M to maintain their efficiency, while also giving their researchers room to innovate. By 2011, 31% of 3Ms revenue was coming from new products, up a whopping 10% from 2006. It won 2,400 patents and launched 1,300 products in 2010 alone.[3. “Heartland Tech Titan,” http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052970204395804576162513319109354]

When a corporate culture isn’t working, it’s often not a case where you need to scrap the whole culture. In the case of 3M, their control structure did have its benefits. It increased efficiency and eliminated wasted time and resources. When the new CEO came on board, he recognized the need for a control environment in such a large organization, but he also recognized the need for aspects of a create environment in certain areas.

Any business dealing with common issues in their company culture can take a look at aspects from an opposite culture to see where their problems can be fixed. If morale is low and turnover is high in a compete environment, then implementing team building ideas from a collaborate environment can improve it. Collaborate environments that aren’t producing can find that a little competition among staff is healthy. Chaotic create environments can add a some structure to their leadership in order to make them more efficient, and control environments can allow a little more wiggle room in structure to encourage creativity. Absolutes in business are never a good thing. The most successful company cultures are the ones that straddle the line between a few different environments, and are dynamic enough to change approaches to adapt to internal or external changes. While a company’s mission and vision should be a fairly unchanging foundation, its company environment should respond to evolving industry trends and market requirements, for instance, or to generational shifts in personnel with corporate environments best suited to their particular needs and ultimate success.

Crossing Corporate Culture to Create Solutions

Organizational culture doesn’t have to be strict and static. Companies can use a dominant one, while implementing ideas from another in order to improve their efficiency, creativity, employee morale, and more. The key to this is recognizing the drawbacks of your own corporate culture and determining what can be improved.

At Applied Vision Works, we’ve identified 15 culture principles that will help leaders manage their company culture though our Culture Connection Program. Contact us today to see how we can help you make your organizational culture one that is embraced and supported by all your employees.